What good alternatives with prices as low?
How Booking.com manipulates users
131–140 of 316 posts
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#132Being a little disillusioned about the world these days I would assume this has a purpose. My guess is this: Booking.com already knows that they are fighting a losing battle against AirBnB. So instead of trying to win it seriously, they go to make the biggest profit they can out of their situation by strongly focussing on the idiots. With idiots you have two advantages: (a) they stay anyways no matter how shitty you…
In Europe, I would say the opposite is happening. AirBnB is being pushed out of or held down in many cities by local authorities. In the last two years I have stayed 50 nights or so in rooms booked through Bookings.com or Hotels.com and only 2 nights in rooms booked through AirBnB, and it's now almost two years ago. I had a good stay in the ArBnB booked apartment but the only reason I used AirBnB in the first place was that I couldn't find a hotel in the city since all hotels were booked. Most people I know have never or only once used AirBnB.
AirBnB is fun to try but I wouldn't rely on someones apartment for my vacation.
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#133To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room. Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster. It isn't just tech-savvy users that will catch on to this either. If an everyday user uses Booking.com, reads reviews and thinks their room will be great, but then has a bad experience, they're going to stop trusting B…
Where's elsewhere then? AirBnB doesn't count, just in case.
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#134I regularly use booking.com and I think what they're doing is rational,not manipulation.
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree it’s better to display the “total cost of stay” in the search results, however that isn’t what Booking.com displays. As OP said they display the “total cost of all nights” which excludes taxes and cleaning/service fees. A few weeks ago I stayed in an apartment in Austria which was €49 for one night, with a €45 cleaning fee... I thought that seemed a bit crazy (ok there were 7 of us, so still pretty good), but…
45€ doesn't sound like much. For a complete apartment cleanup, including bed linen and etc, you need at least three or four hours, so that's around 11-15€/hour. Seems quite reasonable for Austria.
Yeah for Austria it doesn't seem like a bad price, it's just weird that the price is nearly the same as the accomodation fee. And as a Brit the idea of any kind of service fee is pretty foreign in the first place (why not just include it in the advertised price?).
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately for us (and fortunately for TicketMaster), there usually is no alternative to them. That doesn't hold true for Booking.com
Do you know any alternatives? Because last time I looked, every booking site I could find was also owned by the same company that owns Booking.com, other than Expedia, which is also a terrible site that uses dark patterns and other scamminess.
I use booking sites to find, look at and compare hotels. But I try to book by phone or E-mail. Often the hotel asks what rate are you seeing online and negotiations start from there. Except for the dark patterns I believe these companies are also known for channeling their profits to tax evasion paradises. Yeah, it might cost me a few minutes, but I don't book tens of hotels a year.
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#137To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room. Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster. It isn't just tech-savvy users that will catch on to this either. If an everyday user uses Booking.com, reads reviews and thinks their room will be great, but then has a bad experience, they're going to stop trusting B…
I recently used booking.com for the first time, as I was in a rush and needed somewhere to stay that night. The hotel I booked through booking.com was a Best Western. After the booking went through, I received a flurry of emails from both booking.com and Best Western.
One of the Best Western emails encouraged me to sign up for their rewards scheme. Having liked Best Western hotels previously, I signed up, and downloaded the app onto my phone. To get rewards for the booking I just needed the Best Western booking ref. number.
There wasn't one. Just the booking.com ref. number on their Emails, and no ref. number on the Best Western ones.
Once at the hotel I asked for the Best Western booking ref. number and was told "As you've booked through booking.com you don't qualify for rewards on this stay, sorry."
So that will be my first AND last use of booking.com. Fool me once and all that.
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#138What if the manpulation was easily avoidable? The last time this website came up on HN (same issue), I conducted an experiment. The annoyances and manipulation described by the blogger sounded like it relied on Javascript and graphics. I wanted to see how far I could get without using a graphical browser. I was able to 1. search hotels, 2. return a list of properties in CSV/JSON/TXT, 3. return prices and 4. book. It…
Nice. There is https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/README.md . Maybe something equivalent should be done for booking.com .
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes the direct prices are actually more. Your best bet for sticking it to them might be to use an alternative booking service.
Booking.com takes an 18% commission. Only a severely incompetent business would refuse to give you a lower price in exchange for them not having to pay that 18%. All the big franchises (Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Hyatt, Choice, Wyndham) will give you a cheaper “member” price at their direct website. Being a member is free, it’s just like airline miles and you even earn points.
And small hotels will give you extras as they're not allowed to lower the price but can give you more service. However, wouldn't do that in countries you're not comfortable dealing with as you lose the protection that booking.com gives you.
Re: How Booking.com manipulates users
#140To anyone from Booking.com reading this: I'll go elsewhere next time I need to book a room. Dark patterns may help profits in the short-term, but they're terrible for your brand. Just ask TicketMaster. It isn't just tech-savvy users that will catch on to this either. If an everyday user uses Booking.com, reads reviews and thinks their room will be great, but then has a bad experience, they're going to stop trusting B…
> Just ask TicketMaster. TM has been doing pretty well in terms of stock price (not the user happiness) -- probably the metric that they care about. So, I am not sure if that's the best example. Source: https://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chd...
I don't know if they will keep doing well in terms of stock price If/When Amazon release their ticket master competitor[1]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-ticketing/excl...